M. X. Kelly

This book would have gotten 5 stars if the ending hadn't made me angry. To be honest, most of this book pissed me off, but I loved it anyway. It's a cautionary tale about what could happen if the Westboro Baptist Church were to take over America. A warning that our founding fathers, looking backward at the mistakes already made with governing by a religious group (the Puritans) made this country secular for a reason. In this book there's a perpetual war between the Christian sects. We never know the name of the one in the book, except it practiced most fervently the Bible and used this to enslave women in a quasi-harem, passed around from high-ranking official to high-ranking official because their wives were thought to be infertile and there was a population shortage. Always the wives. To even suggest a man might be shooting blanks was blasphemy. And the population was so low, it seemed, mainly because they were killing anyone and everyone that might be thought to disagree with them or to be of no use. This novel is great, though. Through and through an exemplary piece of dystopian literature. I suggest women, and men, read this with a eye toward a progressive future that makes sure something like this never happens. Because, I swear, if the women who fought for my rights to vote and work and all that have their hard work and suffering undone; if those rights are revoked in some unhappy future and we go back to the way shit was for women in biblical times, I swear by my black goth tee shirts I'm coming back from the grave, I'm bringing all those bad ass ladies from history with me, and together we're going to haunt some motherf**kers!